Let It Shine

The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy

John Perlin

• Publisher: New World Library
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781608687916
• eBook ISBN: 9781608687923
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Sustainability in Architecture
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The definitive history of solar power and technology Even as concern over climate change and energy security fuels a boom in solar technology, many still think of solar as a twentieth-century wonder. Few realize that the first photovoltaic array appeared on a New York City rooftop in 1884, or that brilliant engineers in France were using solar power in the 1860s to run steam engines, or that in 1901 an ostrich farmer in Southern California used a single solar engine to irrigate three hundred acres of citrus trees. Fewer still know that Leonardo da Vinci planned to make his fortune by building half-mile-long mirrors to heat water, or that the Bronze Age Chinese used hand-size solar-concentrating mirrors to light fires the way we use matches and lighters today. With thirteen new chapters, Let It Shine is a fully revised and expanded edition of A Golden Thread, John Perlin's classic history of solar technology, detailing the past forty-plus years of technological developments driving today's solar renaissance. This unique and compelling compendium of humankind's solar ideas tells the fascinating story of how our predecessors throughout time, again and again, have applied the sun to better their lives — and how we can, too.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Mark Z. Jacobson
• Preface to the Paperback Edition: The Age of the Sun Begins Again
• Introduction
• Part I. Early Use of the Sun
• Part II. Power from the Sun
• Part III. Solar Water Heating
• Part IV. Solar House Heating
• Part V. Photovoltaics
• Part VI. The Post–Oil Embargo Era
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Illustration Credits and Permission Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author